Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/68

 ha'n't!" murmured Anny, judicially. "It's well to be you!"

In a few moments Arabella replied, in a curiously low, fierce tone of latent sensuousness: "I've got him to care for me—yes! But I want him to more than care for me; I want him to have me—to marry me! I must have him. I can't do without him. He's the sort of man I long for. I shall go mad if I can't give myself to him altogether! I felt I should when I first saw him!"

"As he is a romancing, straightfor'ard, honest chap, he's to be had, and as a husband, if you set about catching him in the right way."

Arabella remained thinking a while. "What med be the right way?" she asked.

"Oh, you don't know—you don't!" said Sarah, the third girl.

"On my word, I don't!—No further, that is, than by plain courting, and taking care he don't go too far!"

The third girl looked at the second. "She don't know!"

Tis clear she don't!" said Anny.

"And having lived in a town, too, as one may say! Well, we can teach 'ee som'at, then, as well as you us."

"Yes. And how do you mean-a sure way to gain a man? Take me for a' innocent, and have done wi' it!"

"As a husband."

"As a husband."

"A countryman that's honorable and serious-minded such as he. God forbid that I should say a sojer, or sailor, or commercial gent from the towns, or any of them that be slippery with poor women! I'd do no friend that harm!"

"Well, such as he, of course!"

Arabella's companions looked at each other, and, turning up their eyes in drollery, began smirking. Then one went up close to Arabella, and, although nobody was near, imparted some information in a low tone, the other observing curiously the effect upon Arabella.